|
Mr. Paul Mills is the president and founder of the
American Kenpo Karate International Association (AKKI)
and is a 10th degree black belt. He serves as the Chief
Examiner at all international tests and is the Chairman
of the AKKI's Board of Directors.
Protégé of Ed Parker
 Mr.
Mills was a private student of Mr. Edmund K. Parker,
the innovator and founder of American Kenpo, for over
ten years and has been at the art since 1966. He is
proud and respectful of his lineage; having had the
opportunity to study and train with one of the best
Martial Artist's the world has ever known.
He learned many valuable lessons from Mr. Parker and
gives him credit for teaching him how to be a more analytical
and logical thinker. Mr. Mills passes down the stories
and experiences he had with Mr. Parker to AKKI members
so that his memory lives on.
Mr. Parker also taught him that innovation is the key
to the future of the system. He encouraged him to think
outside of the traditional ways of doing his system.
This was Mr. Mills platform to move from knowing that
Mr. Parker always stressed this to him in their ten
years together.
The Boom Town Years
Paul Mills has more than twenty years experience working
security in his nightclub "The "Legal Tender"
in the cowboy town of Evanston, Wyoming. He worked some
of the roughest years in Wyoming's history during the
"Boom Years". He had to deal with some of
the wildest cowboys who would often square off against
each other in his nightclub.
He learned many valuable lessons first hand experience
because of his profession. This direct experience has
helped guide him as to what is realistic and practical
when developing the curriculum for AKKI Kenpo.
Innovating on a Strong Foundation
Mr. Mills has followed his instructor's example by
developing and putting back into the system more than
what was just taught to him. In doing so, many things
were combined, rearranged, deleted, added, and fused
together. It was a process of tailoring the system
as Mr. Parker recommended.
He tailored the system because he feels, as do his
students, that improvements have and can be made. Mr.
Parker even encouraged in his writing to "tailor
the system". His innovations aren't anymore simply
his style of moving anymore than American Kenpo was
Ed Parker's style of moving. It is a system of motion
that is intentionally and deliberately structured.
Additionally, his experience as a quick draw artist
has also helped his innovations of the art. By combining
techniques and drills that he used to break and tie
world records into AKKI Kenpo, he added concepts and
principles that weren't previously in Ed Parker's American
Kenpo. Speed is an important attribute in self-defense
and can even be more important than power. However,
both are governed by accuracy.
He has developed a complete and effective club and
knife system based on universally true and correct concepts
and principles of American Kenpo. In this process of
redeveloping as well as developing certain areas and
expanding American Kenpo he had to term new concepts
and principles that he identified that were not part
of the vocabulary and terminology as written or used
by Mr. Parker in his encyclopedia of Kenpo.
What is taught within AKKI affiliate schools, incorporates
some of the ideas that Mr. Parker shared prior to his
death. However, Mr. Mills has carried on the innovation
process to develop the greater majority of what is taught
in AKKI Kenpo today.
Go to: Paul
Mills Photos
|
